Cubs blow 2 leads, rally for ‘season-defining win’

They’re calling it a signature victory. And why not? The Chicago Cubs blew two leads but came back to win 12-11 over the San Francisco Giantson Wednesday in a wild affair at Wrigley Field.

“We haven’t won a game like that all year,” first baseman Anthony Rizzo said. “They scored nine runs in the fifth through the seventh [innings]. Teams don’t really win when that happens. It’s just a good, hard-fought, never-quit win.”

It was the Cubs’ fourth victory in a row, which raised their home record to 43-19. The teams combined to hit seven home runs, including four by the Giants, but Kris Bryant’s eighth-inning, two-run blast was the difference-maker. The Cubs trailed 11-10 before the home run.

“I mean, [Rizzo] said it best to me: That’s a season-defining win right there,” Bryant said. “It kind of felt like we weren’t supposed to win that game, but it’s always nice when you can steal a win from a good team in the Giants.”

Cubs manager Joe Maddon agreed.

He has often talked about his team reaching its next level when the offense becomes a little more consistent. The only way the win might have been bigger would’ve been if it had come on the road, where the Cubs are 25-39.

But that would have deprived the home fans of a heavyweight fight in the batter’s box. The teams exchanged blows until Bryant delivered the knockout.

“We haven’t done that this year,” Maddon said. “We haven’t scored a lot of runs to win a game when we’ve given up a lot of runs. That has to happen on occasion.”

Bryant added: “It’s just that we can do this again. We’re scoring runs, they’re punching us right back. It’s such a back-and-forth game, our bullpen grinding it out. But I love this team, I love the attitude that we have. We’ve been saying it all along, but we never quit, we never give up, and this is a perfect example of that.”